The 1990's decade has been marked by a technological revolution driven by the convergence of the data processing industry with the consumer electronics industry. This advance has been even further accelerated by the extensive consumer and business involvement in the Internet over the past two years. As a result of these changes it seems as if virtually all aspects of human endeavor in the industrialized world requires human/computer interfaces. There is a need to make computer directed activities accessible to a substantial portion of the world's population which, up to a few years ago, was computer illiterate or, at best, computer indifferent. In order for the vast computer supported market places to continue and be commercially productive, it will be necessary for a large segment of computer indifferent consumers to be involved in computer interfaces.
One function which developers of display interfaces have been addressing is ease of use in the entry of data, and particularly the entry of textual data. No matter how intuitive and easy to use an interface may be in its use of icons and related three-dimensional real life to make even the novice user feel at home with the interface, in most human/computer transactions a point is reached when the user must enter data, particularly text data. Unfortunately, most people have limited capabilities with the keyboard which still remains the primary means for entering text into a computer display interface. Data entry system designers recognizing users' limited ability with the keyboard have developed a variety of expedients making text data entry easier. One such expedient in relatively widespread use has been the autocomplete function. Autocomplete involves the system into which the data is being entered developing and saving a library of possible entries for each of a group of data fields required to be entered by the user. Such entry fields could include, for example, names, part descriptions, part numbers, social security numbers and/or telephone numbers. These libraries are developed, to some extent, based upon the historical frequency of usage by either an individual, group, whole industry or business field. Then, as the user starts to make a particular entry, the system attempts to autocomplete by providing a proposed complete entry based upon the portion of text or like data already entered, extrapolated against the stored entries in the library. If the proposed entry coincides with the intended user entry in the field, the user may move on to the next field where autocomplete may again be provided. Accordingly, in an interface such as a tax form or other type of business form, it may be understood that the completion of the entries could be substantially expedited.
On the other hand, such autocomplete functions could confuse the user, particularly in the case of multiple entry fields and with users of limited computer data entry experience. The user could loose track of which entry fields were autocompleted and which were based totally upon the user's own data. In this connection, with a given entry, the user could be confused into accepting the proposed autocomplete entry and moving on to the next entry field even though the proposed entry is different from the intended entry. Thus, with certain combinations of users and entry data types, autocomplete functions may actually make the user display interface more difficult.